It was no secret that Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy were returning for the X-Men First Class sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past. They will be reprising their roles as younger Charles Xavier and Magneto, along with Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast. To many a fan’s delight, Bryan Singer tweeted today with the announcement that Sir Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen would be reprising their roles as older Professor X and Magneto, respectively.

Thrilled to announce @ianmckellen118 & @SirPatStew are joining the cast of #XMEN #DaysOfFuturePast #magneto #professorX More to come…

Days of Future Past was a pivotal two-issue story arc that swapped a current day X-Men, Kitty Pryde, with her older self from the future. As we follow the younger Pryde in the future, we find a timeline where nearly all but a handful of mutants have been wiped out. The future Pryde in the present (follow that?) has to stop events from taking place in the current day to prevent that apocalyptic future.

From the casting, it seems a safe bet that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen will be playing the Professor X and Magneto in that future timeline, while Fassbender and McAvoy will be the younger versions in the ‘present day’. What I want to know is, who will be the time-hopping X-Man? Also, if we are going into the future, do we get a Fantastic Four tie-in by seeing Franklin Richards? Fox owns the movie rights for both X-Men and the Fantastic Four, so in theory they could use that character.

SDCC 2012 is just a few short days away. The news should be starting to flow even sooner than that thanks to preview night and all the companies trying to steal each other’s thunder. To start the festivities for Powet.TV’s coverage we have put together a rather extensive checklist of exclusives available at the convention. There are over a hundred images in this post of cool things you can find at the con, but there may still be some gaps. If you see any, add it in the comments!

With Fear Itself over, Marvel has just announced the next big event, starting in April 2012 with a prelude issue in March. It will be a 12 issue biweekly series featuring the Avengers vs. X-Men. The series will be written by Marvel’s “Architects” Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Jonathan Hickman, and Matt Fraction.

Marvel announced in their “Marvel Digital: What’s Next Panel” at SDCC 2011 that they will be releasing several major comics digitally the same day they are released into comic shops. The first comics to be released like this will be the Amazing Spider-Man series start with issue #666, and all issues under the Spider Island event. Starting this fall new series Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men will also have day an date digital releases.

While the Ultimate Spider-Man series has had day and date digital releases for a while now, the announcement to start releasing much larger titles this way is most likely a response to DC Comics announcement that all 52 comics in the DCU relaunch will have day and date digital released.

This morning, I caught wind that LEGO had gotten the full DC Comics license. The deal will allow LEGO to create figures and playsets based on the characters and properties of DC Comics. The line will launch in January with 13 characters including Joker, Bane, Lex Luthor, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The first pieces from the line will be on display at the LEGO booth at SDCC 2011 this weekend along with 3,000 Batman and Green Lantern exclusive figures as part of a promotion for the line.

The Marvel announcement stated that their deal would similarly cover figures and playsets. The license would take effect January 1, 2012 and would start seeing products roll out about May of 2012. The Super Heroes Marvel Collection would focus on the Avengers movie as well as classic Spider-man and X-Men characters. Some of the characters specifically mentioned included Wolverine, Nick Fury, Magneto, Deadpool, Spider-man, Doctor Octopus, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Loki and more. Select items, again, will be on display at SDCC 2011 this weekend.

It looks like both licenses will be brought under LEGO’s new Super Heroes line. LEGO scored a major coup with these two licenses and surely dealt a very strong blow to Hasbro’s up and coming construction block brand, KRE-O. Can KRE-O strike back with Star Wars?

With a lot of developments from the video game world to cover, the Powetcast enlists returning champions Zac, aDam, and Captain Genius with the long awaited return of Sindra and guest starring Famicom Dojo’s Vinnk!

The show rolls on 55 minutes in and shifts gear to talk about X-Men: First Class with Zac, aDam, and Crazy Jaco!